


Sometimes Boyfriends Bring Flowers

by parentaladvisorybullshitcontent



Series: Astronaut AU [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Astronaut AU, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 16:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8169152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parentaladvisorybullshitcontent/pseuds/parentaladvisorybullshitcontent
Summary: Their entire relationship feels too good to be true, from that first time Dan looked twice at Phil's smile on the control room monitors to the first time he saw him in person, so pale and happy looking. It's stupid, but Dan thinks maybe he'll always be waiting for the punchline, the inevitable moment when it turns out it isn't real after all.Sequel to Never Fade Away. In which Dan and Phil are together at last, and Dan can barely believe his luck





	

**Author's Note:**

> I promised myself I wouldn't write a sequel to Never Fade Away...And yet here we are. Apologies for all of the sickly sweetness up ahead, if you've been advised by your dentist to cut down on sugary stuff you should probably give this a miss. Totally self indulgent and kind of disjointed in style and I'm sorry D:
> 
> You don't really have to read Never Fade Away to understand this but it'd help, Idk. Phil's an astronaut and Dan's not, basically. Can you tell I've never written a sequel before, I'm clueless
> 
> Shoutout to The Group Chat™ and anyone I bugged about this (which means EVERYONE). And to anyone who enjoyed Never Fade Away, because I genuinely expected that fic to bomb and it didn't, so...thank you <3 <3 <3

“It's the glimmers,” Phil says. He's all hunched over in a window seat on the hydro-shuttle, hands resting on his bent knee as he stares out at the water passing outside. “That's what you've got to look out for, ok, because water doesn't glimmer like that. I mean it does, but you're on the lookout for _fishy_ glimmers, ok?”

“Ok,” Dan says. He's sitting opposite Phil, and he hasn't spotted so much as a bubble yet. Looking away from Phil for half a second would probably help, but he doesn't really want to. The fact that Phil's sitting right there, wearing one of Dan's t-shirts, is way more fascinating and unbelievable than fish in the water system.

It takes Phil way too long to realise that Dan isn't looking for fish. He smiles, flushing a little, and says, “The fish are out _there_ , Dan.”

“I know,” Dan says, lightly. He doesn't feel as embarrassed about being caught out as he thinks he would've a few months ago. He's allowed to look at Phil as much as he wants, now. Judging by the way Phil's looking at him, he doesn't mind at all. “I, er. Ok, so, don't kill me, but I'm so tempted to bust out some _line_ about how there are, like, tons of fish at my place.”

Phil laughs.

“Oh my God,” He says, looking back out of the window for a second. Dan can see him trying to hide his smile behind his hand. “Ok, so. Fish at your place, you said?”

Dan grins at him, heart feeling fluttery and weird. He's used to that by now – it's just a daily side-effect of being with Phil most of the time.

“So many fish,” He says, as seriously as he can.

“Then what are we still doing here?” Phil says, in this exaggerated voice that makes Dan snort out a laugh.

“ _Fish at your place_ , oh my God,” He says, a few minutes later, when they're filing off the shuttle at the stop closest to Dan's apartment.

“What?” Dan says, resting his hand on Phil's back so he doesn't lose him amongst the commuters. “It worked, didn't it?”

“Just this once,” Phil says, making a big show of rolling his eyes.

“I'm smooth,” Dan tells him, just in case he didn't know.

“Sure,” Phil says. He ruins how unimpressed he sounds by grabbing hold of Dan's hand and squeezing it tightly.

-

Dan doesn't realise how late it is until his outer door sensor bleeps.

Phil's apartment building is far more modern than Dan's, with this scarily calm female voice that gives a weird police-style description of anyone who breaches your outer door sensor. It makes Dan squirm when he stands there, listening to this pared down description of himself ( _caucasian male, approximately 6 ft 2, brown hair, brown eyes..._ )

“I'm closer to six three,” Dan never fails to inform him when he finally opens the door.

“I know,” Phil always says, grinning at him.

Dan's apartment building is (thankfully) too old for any of that, so he has to actually rush over to the phone by the door to find out who his visitor is.

“You're not ready, are you?” Phil says.

“I am,” Dan says, resenting the implication even though it's completely true. Phil scoffs. “I _am_. I'll be, like, two seconds.”

“Can I come up and wait?”

“I mean,” Dan says, tucking the phone between his shoulder and his ear so he can tug his grimy socks off and throw them across the room. “I'm not gonna be long, so you could just, like, wait there?”

“I can _hear_ you getting changed,” Phil says, clearly amused, just as Dan's trying to shove his stupid pyjamas down his stupid legs.

“I'm not!” Dan says, successfully kicking the pyjamas off one leg. They end up draped over the coffee table. “I'm just – tough stain by the door, you know? Trying to,” He pulls his t-shirt up under his arms and then stops, unable to do anything else while he's still on the phone. “Trying to, like, clean.”

“ _Dan_.”

“I'll be two minutes, ok, I swear I'm ready.”

“Two minutes,” Phil says.

Dan can practically see the cogs turning in his brain so he quickly says, “I swear to God, if you're setting a timer on your phone-”

“ _Two minutes_.”

“Oh my God, I hate you,” Dan says, and hangs up.

He's halfway across the room, having thrown his t-shirt God knows where, when he stops and rushes back to the phone.

“That was, like, an exaggeration.”

“I know.”

“I don't hate you.”

“I know.”

“And I'm sorry I'm lame.”

“Dan,” Phil says, and God, just the way Dan can hear him smiling makes him feel warm. “Get dressed. You're not lame.”

“I'm dressed!”

“Oh my God,” Phil says, under his breath. Dan grins so hard it kind of hurts. “Your lameness rating is getting higher by the second, y'know.”

“Rude,” Dan says. After a pause, he adds, “You should come up and wait.”

“ _No_ ,” Phil says, so vehemently Dan'd be forgiven for thinking he'd just suggested that they go for a dip in an active volcano.

“ _What_? Oh my God, two seconds ago you _wanted_ to come up and wait-”

“Yeah, and then you used _the voice_ ,” Phil says, exasperatedly. “And our reservation's at _six_ , Dan, so I'm just gonna wait down here.”

“What voice, oh my God,” Dan says, feeling his face grow hot.

“ _Oh hey, you should come up and wait_ ,” Phil says, in a low voice that sounds offensively nothing like Dan.

“Ok, so the voice is fucking stupid, good to know,” Dan says, over Phil laughing at himself. “Seriously, you should come up.”

“Are you wearing pants?” Phil asks. When Dan doesn't reply immediately, he adds, “Yeah, I'm fine down here.”

“You suck,” Dan says, and hangs up again, for real this time.

It's not like he _forgot_ that Phil was coming over, he thinks as he scrabbles around in his sock drawer. He's just generally confident in his abilities to get ready with two seconds to spare, that's all.

Judging by the sudden bleep of the outdoor sensor going off again, probably because Phil's waving at it to _make_ it go off, he doesn't agree.

Actually, Dan knows Phil doesn't agree. He hates being late – it makes him nervous, and he refuses to hold Dan's hand because his palms get all sweaty when he starts to properly freak out. Dan knows that. It's not like he does this stuff on purpose to give Phil a heart attack, or anything, he just – doesn't think. And then it's too late.

It takes him about six minutes to get a wash, douse his hair in dry shampoo and kind of move it around a little, spray himself all over with deodorant (because that whole _teenage boy bathed in body spray_ vibe is so attractive, he's sure) and throw on his cleanest jeans-that-don't-look-like-jeans and a nice shirt. He's just deliberating over shoes when there's a knock at his front door. Grabbing two of the likeliest looking pairs, he rushes to answer it.

“Spikes or snakeskin,” Dan says, instead of hello, when the door slides open to reveal Phil standing there. “And stop charming my neighbours into letting you in.”

“I can't help all of this,” Phil says, with a grin, gesturing at himself with one hand.

“Ugh,” Dan says, rolling his eyes like Phil doesn't look amazing, all clean shaven and handsome. “Honestly, though, which ones?”

He waggles the shoes under Phil's nose.

“Er, snakeskin, I guess? It's not real, right?” Phil says. He's holding one of his arms behind his back kind of weirdly.

“No,” Dan says, stepping aside to let him in. Phil twists at the last minute and backs into the flat like he's trying to moonwalk, successfully hiding whatever he's got behind his back. “I like snakes. Why are you walking backwards?”

“Shut up,” Phil says, probably because Dan's smiling at him. “It's forty minutes 'til our reservation, I'm unavailable for comment until you're actually wearing shoes.”

Making a big show of rolling his eyes and huffing under his breath, Dan sits down to put his shoes on. It's harder when Phil's actually there, though – he's wearing that aftershave, the one he said he was gonna stop wearing because it smelt too sweet. That had been three days ago, and Dan had told him how much he likes it, and how much he likes it when his pillows smell like it after Phil sleeps over.

That's enough to make Dan fumble clumsily with his shoelaces, if he's honest. The fact that they're here now, and Phil's wearing an aftershave he doesn't even _like_ just to make Dan happy. Phil's standing there waiting for him, even though there's less than an hour 'til their reservation and Phil loves to be on time.

He's standing there in Dan's flat looking like...like _that_.

“I like your shirt,” Dan can't help but tell him. He doesn't think he's ever seen Phil wear it before – it's dark blue and sort of silky looking.

“Oh,” Phil says, looking down like he's forgotten which one he's got on. “Oh, thanks. I like your-” He stops, staring at Dan's legs. “Will they let you in with jeans on?”

“I'm gonna swear on everything that they're actually casual dress trousers,” Dan says, finally conquering his shoelaces and standing up.

“I'll swear on everything that I don't know you if you get asked to leave,” Phil says, reaching out to hold Dan's hand. “You look good.”

“So do you,” Dan says, and kisses him, reaching behind his back at the same time so he can feel whatever Phil's hiding in his other hand. His hand skims over crinkly paper and then something soft and leafy. He ends up pulling away abruptly just to ask, “Oh my God, did you bring _flowers_?”

“Ugh,” Phil says, hitting him on the arm and producing the flowers from behind his back. They're beautiful, wrapped in silvery paper, and they're _black_. Dan makes a choking laugh noise that he abruptly tries to hide behind his hand as a cough. “I mean, you can take them as, like, a joke, because – well, they're _black_ , and I swear to God the guy in the florist thought I had this, like, super goth girlfriend-”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Dan says, laughing.

“Or you can take them as flowers,” Phil continues, handing him them. “Because, like, sometimes boyfriends bring flowers. And. I realised I hadn't yet, and tonight's meant to be a  _date_ , so-”

Dan just kisses him again, moving the flowers to the side so they don't get crushed.

“I can't believe you bought black flowers,” He says, laughing and pulling back, resisting Phil's attempts to tug him back again. “No, I need to get water for my one hundred percent aesthetic-conforming flowers, are you kidding me?”

“Fine,” Phil says, letting him go with a grin. “Remember our reservation, though.”

“You're joking, right?” Dan calls back over his shoulder on his way to the kitchen. “I have to take about a hundred pictures for Instagram.”

“Oh _God_ ,” Phil says. Dan laughs, setting the flowers down on the draining board for a second while he fills a pint glass with water. “I'm filled with so much regret right now.”

Dan ignores him in favour of gently putting the flowers in the pint glass. He stops for all of half a second to look at them, just because nobody's given him flowers before, much less ridiculous _black_ ones.

“Half an hour 'til our reservation,” Phil's saying when Dan rushes back into the living room, grinning.

“And I'm ready,” Dan says, grabbing his jacket and his wallet off the sofa.

“Finally,” Phil grumbles.

He lets Dan hold his slightly-damp hand all the way to the restaurant.

-

Dan's tablet bleeps loudly in the near-silence of the control room. He nearly jumps out of his skin, keysmashing halfway through a perfectly respectable set of commands for a robot arm on the moon rover.

“Jesus,” He says, hurriedly backspacing and determinedly not checking his tablet, which is face-down next to his keyboard.

It bleeps again. Dan looks up quickly enough to catch Darren, one of the new techs, giving him a disapproving look, like it's _him_ who's been working here all of five minutes. He finishes the command prompt in about two seconds, just so he can flip his tablet over and read the two messages he technically isn't supposed to have on any work-issue technology.

_Can we get pizza and watch scary movies 2night ^_^ xxx_

_oops sorry you're not on a break yet are you, pls dont hate me xxx_

He's grinning down at the messages helplessly when someone claps him on the shoulder and he jumps again, the tablet skittering out of his hands and falling under his desk.

“Peej,” He says, clutching his chest more than a little dramatically and looking up at the guy in question, who's smiling knowingly at him.

“The Commander wants you down in the archives tomorrow,” He says. “Sorry.”

“Great,” Dan says, thinking of the disarray the files were in last time he was down there. “You know, I'm gonna sue the first time I get, like, slightly wheezy with all that dust.”

“Duly noted,” PJ says. Then, after a moment's pause, he adds, “So how is he?”

Dan thinks for a second about acting clueless, but he doesn't even think he could fake it.

“He's ok,” He says, with a would-be casual shrug.

Dan's tablet bleeps from under his desk.

“Yeah, I can tell,” PJ says, grinning. “Tell him I said hi.”

“I dunno what you're talking about,” Dan says, all wide-eyed innocence.

“Sure,” PJ says, already walking away. “It's lucky you guys are cute.”

-

“Am I over here too much?” Dan says, later. They're curled up on the sofa in Phil's apartment. Phil's head's on his shoulder, and he might be asleep, which is why Dan says it in the first place. Plausible deniability is always the best thing.

“Mm?” Phil says, shifting until he hooks his foot over Dan's ankle, a move that leaves his leg basically in Dan's lap, arm thrown over him too like a koala clinging to a tree.

“Do you just wanna sit on me,” Dan says, momentarily distracted, hiding a smile in Phil's hair. “'Cause if you do we should probably pause this, I'm just saying.”

Phil's answering laugh is a little flare of warm breath through Dan's t-shirt.

“Maybe later,” He says, sleepily. There's a moment of silence in which Dan prepares to just focus on the TV, but it turns out Phil was listening after all. “What d'you mean, are you over here too much? I invited you.”

“I know,” Dan says, feeling awkward all of a sudden. “I just...”

It just feels too good to be true, he thinks. Their entire relationship feels too good to be true, from that first time Dan looked twice at Phil's smile on the control room monitors to the first time he saw him in person, so pale and _happy_ looking.

It's stupid, but he thinks maybe he'll always be waiting for the punchline, the inevitable moment when it turns out it isn't real after all. Even though the majority of him knows that Phil's sincere, that he wouldn't spend so much time with Dan if he didn't want to – that it'd be impossible to fake the way he smiles at Dan sometimes, squinting a little like he's staring at the sun and making Dan want to kiss the creases next to his eyes.

Phil's quiet, and Dan thinks maybe he's fallen asleep until he presses his cheek further into Dan's shoulder and says, “You'll know when I don't want you over here because I'll tell you. But that's not gonna happen, like, ever.” He pauses. “Even if you drive me crazy when you leave stuff 'til the last minute.”

“Oh my God,” Dan says, breathing out a laugh. “I'm – I'll try and be better with that.”

“I didn't, oh God,” Phil pulls back to look him in the eye, disentangling them a little. By now Dan's practically old friends with the worried look he has on his face. “I didn't say that so you'd.” He makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “I'd much rather have you around, ok, with all of your, like, timekeeping issues, you know, than not have you at all. Ok?”

“Ok,” Dan says, the word feeling thick on his tongue.

He gets caught for a second looking at Phil, just the way the lamplight catches him and the glint of his eyes. He's about to awkwardly apologize when Phil makes another weird noise and says, “Pause the movie.”

“What?” Dan says, stupidly. He doesn't even know what's _happening_ in the movie.

“Pause it,” Phil says, and leans in to kiss him, his hand hot and heavy on Dan's cheek. “ _Now_ I'm gonna sit on you.”

Dan's startled laugh is cut off when Phil kisses him again.

“You're so lame,” He says, breathlessly, a few minutes later, scrambling for the remote. “That's like – and they say romance is dead, Jesus Christ, Phil.”

But he pauses the TV anyway, the two of them laughing at each other when Dan pulls him in close.

-

Dan hates appointment days.

He didn't always go with Phil. For ages he didn't even know about the appointments – Phil just kept it to himself, travelling there alone once a week, a dreary solo journey to the doctor's office. As soon as Dan found out, he tried to go with him as often as possible.

“You don't have to,” Phil says, sighing, like he doesn't cling a little when he hugs Dan after he gets out of the sterile white examination room. “It's just routine, that's all. Make sure I'm not gonna, like, _irradiate_ , or whatever.”

“I know,” Dan says. They're sitting in the same two seats in the bright waiting room, plush corner chairs with a view of the whole room. It's the classiest doctor's office Dan's ever been in, that's for sure – all sleek wood panelling and soft lighting. “We can get coffee from that place you like afterwards.”

It's easier to pretend he's in it for the coffee than to actually acknowledge to himself that he's nervous. He's always nervous about these appointments, ever since he found out they existed.

It's not like Dan didn't _know_ that space travel was dangerous. He spends half his time filing reports about doomed space missions, of course he knows firing a fragile human being in a fragile pod out of the earth's atmosphere at a terrifying speed might be more than a little risky. He's seen the strawberry jam videos.

But he'd never really thought of stuff like this before - about radiation poisoning, or cancer. He'd never _had_ to think about it before, and it makes him think about all the astronauts he's met differently. They must know all about what they're risking to go out into space and they just...go anyway.

He and Phil have never had that conversation, but Dan's pretty sure it's curiosity that drives him. Phil's the kind of guy who has to use a blank piece of paper to cover the next page in an open book because his eyes automatically skip ahead, desperate to know what's about to happen. It's just the way he is. Like when he was a kid, looking at the sky with his telescope.

“It wasn't, like, a professional interest, or anything,” Phil had explained, once. “Seriously, I only have the absolute basic training. It's just – I couldn't stop looking out there. And I just _wanted_...I dunno. It just felt like another place I could go one day. Like when you look at somewhere on a map. Only...with space.”

Dan isn't surprised at all that Phil's fascination was bigger than his fear for his own welfare. He could've guessed that much earlier, what with how Phil's the star astronaut for the most poorly funded space program to ever exist.

The doctor's appointments are just a side-effect of all those years Phil spent looking up at the stars as a kid. They weigh Phil and they scan him and they ask him questions about his diet and his medication (“Radiation suppressants,” He explained, when Dan first saw them in his bathroom cabinet. “At least we can afford the fancy tablets, right?”)

Dan sits in the waiting room, insides squirming into a thousand tight knots. He avoids the eyes of the other people waiting there, all wearing fancy clothes and clicking around on expensive-looking tablets.

After a while – long enough for Dan to have imagined every conceivable worst case scenario that could be going on behind the heavy-looking panelled door at the other end of the room - Phil comes out and tells him everything's fine. And repeat.

It's scary to Dan how _important_ Phil is. The idea of him is so huge in Dan's mind that he could forget that he's just a regular guy who could get sick like anyone else.

So he sits and he twists his fingers together and clicks around on his phone without really seeing it for half an hour, until Phil comes back out of the examination room.

“Sorry,” He says, when Dan gets up to meet him. “I didn't think it'd take that long.”

“It always takes that long,” Dan reminds him, heart stuttering unpleasantly. “How's...everything?”

“Bone mass is good, muscle mass is good,” Phil recites, reaching between them to touch Dan's hand, which makes him think his poker face about all of this isn't as convincing as he'd thought. “As good as it ever was, anyway. And, er, radiation levels are fine.”

“Fine,” Dan says, fingers twitching a little against the warmth of Phil's. “That's, like-”

“ _Fine_ ,” Phil says, touching his cheek. Even though neither of them are into public displays Dan can't help but relax into it – into the warmth of Phil's (very much alive) hands. “I'm fine, Dan.”

“Fucking...shitty space program,” Dan says, quieter than he'd intended. “You know, if you _weren't_ fine, I'd-”

“I know,” Phil says, softly, and kisses him. Dan doesn't want to be kissed, he wants to be stupidly upset for a little while longer, but Phil's so gentle and he's fine, he's really fine. “I'm ok.”

“Ok,” Dan says, squeezing Phil's hand tightly and wishing it was as easy as that to stop worrying.

-

“Dan,” PJ says.

He actually asked Dan into his office to have this conversation. Dan didn't even know PJ _had_ an office. He's even using this businesslike voice, looking at the papers on his desk. Dan wonders if him having an office means they can't be friends anymore, or something. Either that or he's about to lose his job. Maybe PJ had to trade his friendship with Dan for a promotion.

“I've decided to train you to reach superior tech status during the next mission,” PJ says.

“Oh,” Dan says. He doesn't know what he'd been expecting, but it wasn't that. Well – maybe he'd been expecting a reprimand for using official equipment to message his stir-crazy astronaut boyfriend, but not a _promotion_. “Oh – ok. Are you sure? Like...there are other techs, and -”

“And you're the best out of all of them,” PJ says. Dropping his professional manner, he adds in an undertone, “Dan please, the only other guy in the running is Alex and I had to teach him how to turn his computer on the other day. And he's worked here longer than me.”

Dan laughs.

“Ok, ok, I'll do it. I'm not gonna turn down a promotion.”

PJ beams at him.

“Great,” He says. “I mean, there aren't that many perks. I mean, you'll get clearance to the solo control room. No need to thank me. Although I swear, if you're gonna use it during the next mission for, like,” He wiggles his hand in some incomprehensible gesture and pulls a face. “... _weird stuff_ , I don't want to know, ok?”

“What?” Dan says. “Why would I-?” He nearly bites his tongue because he stops speaking so suddenly, realising what PJ means. “Phil's going back up there?”

“Er, yeah,” PJ says, hesitantly. Dan lets a breath out through his nose, annoyed-sounding in the sudden quiet. “I, er. I thought you'd know. We had a meeting about it last week. It's, erm. Next month.”

“Er, I didn't know,” Dan says, trying for nonchalance when his brain's keeping up some monologue on the pros and cons of escaping from your clingy boyfriend by just disappearing back into space without telling him. “I. It's fine, it probably slipped his mind.”

“Ok,” PJ says, looking concerned. “Hey, you can go and call him, if you want.”

“What?” Dan says, shaking his head a little like a dog dislodging water from its ears. “No, no, it's fine, I'll talk to him later.” He forces out a smile. “You still need to tell me what other perks I'm getting with this whole promotion thing.”

-

“I don't mind you going.”

“Right, yeah,” Phil says with a bite of sarcasm in his voice, the huff of him breathing sounding strange over the receiver. “ _You don't mind_ , that's definitely the feeling I'm getting from all this.”

“I _don't_ mind,” Dan repeats. He realises it's more than a little ridiculous to say that after the hurt texts and the semi-argument over the phone and now, when Phil's outside his flat and Dan's spent the last ten minutes refusing to let him in. “I just – you didn't tell me.”

He sounds pathetic and childish to his own ears, his voice small. Phil's sigh is a crackle down the phone line.

“I was gonna tell you,” He says. “I – of course I was gonna tell you, I just – I forgot, I dunno. I'm an idiot. I didn't intentionally keep it from you, or anything.”

“I know,” Dan says. He really does. Things slip in and out of Phil's mind like sunlight on moving water, that's just the way he is. “I _know_.” He leans forwards and rests his head against the doorframe, closing his eyes. “Sorry.”

“It's ok,” Phil says, softly. “ _I'm_ sorry. I should've told you the second I found out. It's just – we had our date that night, and – and I – I dunno.” He pauses. “Are you gonna let me in so I can hug you now, or not?”

Dan snickers.

“Yeah, sure,” He says, hitting the outer door button and hanging up.

-

The best hugs with Phil are the ones where they somehow squeeze themselves onto Dan's beaten-up old sofa in some weird mess of long legs and arms. It's not always comfortable – Phil's not the softest person to hug. Dan can't count the number of times he's been clipped by a bony elbow or a knee or even Phil's chin, but that doesn't mean he doesn't love hugging the guy.

“I shouldn't have overreacted,” Dan says. It's too stuffy here, with his face shoved by Phil's neck and a sofa cushion. There's something weirdly fascinating about feeling the movement of Phil's throat with his face, though.

“I should've told you,” Phil says, wriggling around a little so he can ease his hand out from where it's trapped down by Dan's waist. Dan laughs a little, turning his head to watch the slow progress of his arm as he reaches up and touches Dan's hair for all of half a second. He stops almost immediately and lets his arm drop, swearing under his breath and accidentally elbowing Dan in the ribs. “Remind me again why we even lie like this? Like, ever?”

“It's nice,” Dan says, moving forwards the tiniest amount to press a tiny kiss to Phil's neck. He can feel a rough patch on the underside of Phil's chin that he must've missed when he shaved, so he kisses that too. “I mean, my arm's totally dead-”

“My leg's literally numb for life,” Phil says, all in a rush, like he'd been waiting for Dan to complain before he started. “Seriously, you're gonna have to carry me around forever now.”

“Er, whatever,” Dan says. “I have enough trouble carrying myself around without carrying you too.”

“You're mean.”

“You're an idiot,” Dan says, shifting a little so he can see Phil's face properly. “Hey, no space program for you if you've lost the use of your leg. I'm kidding, I'm kidding!” He adds, quickly, when Phil gives him a look. “No, seriously, I don't mind you going.”

“Really?” Phil says, worriedly.

“Yeah,” Dan says, feeling guilty all of a sudden. _Well done Dan_ , he thinks, _you genuinely made Phil feel bad for wanting to do his job_. “You should – this is the thing you love, and – and I want you to do it, and I'll be, like, front and centre in the control room every single day, ok?”

“Ok,” Phil says, his frown softening a little.

He looks at Dan for a moment. It's the kind of sweeping, gentle gaze that used to make Dan squirm with awkwardness, but he knows there's no malice there. Of course there isn't. It's one of the things he's come to accept over the past few months – that sometimes Phil's going to look at him just because he _wants_ to.

“I'm gonna miss you,” He says. All of Dan's potential responses get stuck in his throat, so Phil hurries to continue. “I mean, like – of course I will, like – I had to really think about going back, kind of, like – because it's not like I've not got other people I'll miss, you know, like my family or whatever, but – but. I dunno.” He pauses and swallows. “I'm gonna miss you, like. Extra.”

“I'm gonna miss you too,” Dan says, so quietly he barely hears himself. His throat feels thick, so he pushes his head back into the uncomfortable space by Phil's throat, just because he doesn't trust himself to look him in the eye anymore.

“Control room,” Phil says, somehow pulling Dan closer. His knee's jabbing Dan in the leg and Dan's rapidly losing feeling in his left foot but Dan can bitch about all of that later. It doesn't seem important right now. “Every day?”

“Every day,” Dan promises, lifting his head a little. “I expect, like, fucking, detailed mission logs, ok?”

“The most detailed,” Phil says, and kisses Dan's forehead. “Now, can we move, because seriously, I think I'm gonna have to have my leg amputated.”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Dan says, wriggling around until he can disentangle himself and get off the sofa. He holds a hand out to help Phil up. “I take it back, I'm not gonna miss you at all.”

The way he pulls Phil to his feet and kisses him a little too hard probably gives him away.

-

“Good morning everyone,” PJ says, speaking into his headset and addressing the control room. “I'm Tech 432 and I'll be fielding this launch. This is Tech 326, he'll be assisting me today.

“Hi,” Dan says, awkwardly, moving his hand away from his mouth for a second so he can speak without chewing his thumbnail. He already knows the gossip in the cafeteria – that he's only been promoted because he's _sleeping with the main talent_ , but he doesn't care. Whenever any of the other techs talk about him these days in little whispers he just thinks of before it became mandatory to log time at workspaces and Phil could've died because of the night team's negligence.

Dan thinks he deserves his promotion on that alone.

“They're just jealous _they're_ not sleeping with the main talent,” He can practically hear Phil saying, after which he'd probably clarify that that's what they really said (“The _main_ talent? Really?”)

Not that he's spoken to Phil about it yet. It's been hours since he saw him.

A sleek black car showed up at Phil's apartment to pick him up that morning, and it was only when Phil'd insisted that Dan should accompany him until decontamination that the tech driving the car even let Dan get in.

They hadn't talked on the way there, not really. Dan didn't trust his voice. He didn't trust anything about himself, not today. Phil's voice had started to shake a little – even the slightest promise of excitement makes him tremble like a leaf, Dan knows.

“You're the worst astronaut,” He'd said, managing to laugh when they were getting out of the car at the launch facility. “I swear, Phil, you can't keep still for two seconds-”

“I'm energetic,” Phil protested, hiking his bag up on his shoulder and grabbing hold of Dan's hand. “It's a good quality.”

They entered the registration area, and Dan hadn't said goodbye. He stuck around while Phil had his photograph taken mugshot-style, while he got weighed, scanned with weird black devices, asked a million incomprehensible questions by more and more black-clad techs.

He hadn't said goodbye that entire time. Phil had kept up a chirping little monologue the whole time (“At least it's only fifty days this time. Back in time for Christmas. I love Christmas, d'you love Christmas? I feel like we should've discussed this before...”)

In the end, Dan didn't say goodbye until the last possible moment – at the entrance of the decontamination chamber. From there, Phil had already told him, it's straight into a spacesuit and final checks and more examinations, in case the earlier ones had somehow been wrong.

“I did ask them if you could get decontaminated with me,” Phil said, in an undertone, when they were hugging hard enough to crack ribs. “It's a really big shower, you'd love it.”

“Right, yeah,” Dan said, breathing in the smell of him and mapping out the feel of his back under his hands. “Because industrial showers with weird astro cleaner really do it for me.”

“Worth a try,” Phil said, and squeezed him harder. Dan had tried to pull back, not trusting himself and the lump in his throat, but Phil added, “Not yet, not yet, ok, just – not yet.”

Dan had closed his eyes and swallowed. He'd blinked away the stinging in his eyes, because Phil's done this before, and he's excited, and Dan's _happy_ for him.

“Ugh,” Phil said, when he finally let Dan go, touching his face. “This was way easier before you existed, you know that?”

Dan laughed. It'd been a little sad sounding, but if Phil noticed he didn't say anything.

“I always existed. You just didn't know about it yet.”

“Stupid,” Phil said, softly, like he could've somehow met Dan earlier. “You're not,” Dan had said. It felt important to get this out, so he'd gulped in a breath, reaching up to touch Phil's hand on the side of his face. “I know I always make jokes that you're, y'know. But you're so fucking clever, and – and this is gonna be great, and – and we can do so much gross Christmas stuff when you get back, and – and – God, come here.”

Kissing him had been easier than talking, then. Now, though, standing in the control room and listening to PJ laying out the fundamentals of the launch, going through all of the necessary protocol, Dan wishes they'd talked more. He wishes he'd _said_ something, managed to put into words all the things he thinks about Phil, pull all the difficult words out of his chest like untangling a piece of thread.

There wasn't enough _time_. Dan thinks of all the time he's wasted – all the days he wasn't at Phil's apartment for fear of annoying him, the fact that he's spent the past few months playing what Phil calls _the pronoun game_ with his mum, not wanting to have to go through some pantomime of _coming out_ to his parents. And now he's here again, standing in this stupid room, while the screen shows a blurry, static shot of a white-clad figure clambering into another painfully delicate-looking spacecraft.

Dan's worried he might throw up, or start yelling. This whole thing's madness, what's Phil thinking? What are any of them thinking? PJ's still calmly reading through the usual procedures, and Dan can't take his eyes off the indistinct image of Phil, belting himself into the pod, the inner cameras activating so that their view of him cycles through four different vantage points, like old CCTV footage. Dan's dimly aware that people are looking at him – probably more whispers that he can't hear over the roaring noise in his ears.

“...Can I get a remote scan of the pod, please?” Phil's voice rings out across the room, clinical and calm. He's in the zone, Dan can tell. It eases the twisting up of his stomach, if only a little. “Er, Tech432, oxygen levels seem stable in here, I'm gonna need someone to keep an eye on them for when depression occurs-”

“Already on it,” One of the techs calls across the room.

“Alright, everyone,” PJ says. “If you're strapped in over there, Phil?”

“I, er,” Dan watches him give his belts a tug, with an awkward little laugh. “As good as they're gonna be? You guys can't write a command prompt for that, I'm guessing.”

A ripple of laughter passes over the control room. Dan accidentally catches PJ's eye, and PJ smiles at him, tapping the back of his hand. He looks down at where he's gripping the chair in front of him so tightly his knuckles have gone white.

“Oh,” He says, louder than he'd intended, letting the chair go. His heart leaps stupidly when he sees Phil looking up at the sound of his voice.

 _Everything's ok_ , PJ mouths at him, giving his wrist a quick squeeze before he steps forwards to address the room again.

“Alright, everyone, let's begin. We've done all the introductory stuff, so, er, all that remains is to wish you luck and mark this down as day one of the moon satellite repair sessions.”

“Thanks,” Phil says.

“And if you've got any final remarks you want to make before lift-off, now's the time.”

Dan knows that the final remarks of astronauts are important around here. At least, there are whole files dedicated to recording them and keeping them in order, even if most of them are the same dull, rehearsed _I'd like to thank you all and I'm hoping this mission is satisfactory_ , or whatever.

“I, er. Yeah,” Phil says. Dan watches him pressing buttons and flicking switches, looking focused and concentrated in a way that now makes Dan think of late nights playing video games and fish-spotting on the shuttle. “Thank you all for, you know, all of your stuff. I really appreciate it. And, er, just as an aside, like – Tech 326, you're looking really good today, and I just know you're not smiling right now, so I really – you've got a great smile, and you should use it. Or, like, if not you should donate it to someone who wants a nicer one, you know?”

Another ripple of incredulous laughter crosses the room, but Dan barely hears it. His face is burning and he's laughing a little when he says, “Erm. Duly noted, thanks.”

PJ grins over at him and says, “You nailed it, Phil, don't worry.”

Phil laughs.

“Exactly how much do you hate me right now?” He's looking straight ahead, the cameras cycling through to side profile, but Dan knows he's talking to him.

“So much,” He says, to another few laughs across the room. “I'll see you in a bit, ok?”

It's inadequate for everything he's feeling. Of course it is. He's starting to think he'll never be able to tell Phil just how he feels – not without a couple of pages of notes and a few awkward interludes where he tries to be funny.

The way Phil smiles seems like he gets it anyway.

“Ok,” He says, softly. Then, “Come on, Peej, let's get this show on the road.”


End file.
